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February 20, 2004
Like the fool that he is
Dylan talked copiously, then stopped.
‘Somebody’s boring me,’ he said, ‘I think it’s me’.
— Rayner Heppenstall (on Dylan Thomas)
The fool had hoped that the world was not as cruel a place as he had suspected. But then, that’s why they called him a fool. A bright-eyed, clever kind of fool, but a fool nonetheless.
A fool, you should know, is different to an idiot. An idiot is too dumb to get anything they might deserve; a fool has it handed to them and runs away screaming.
Unlike a dunce, standing in the corner with his hat on, knowing the frustration he has caused for those around him through his sheer stupidity, the fool refuses to give up. He’s foolhardy. The fool remembers a smiling face, warm hands and fresh fruit in the morning sunshine, and, like the fool that he is, proceeds to dream foolish dreams. He wakes, early, and wanders the streets, wondering if the people pushing past can spot him as a fool, convinces himself they cross the road to avoid him, lest his foolish ways rub off.
He knows his past foolhardiness has struck out any remote chance of making things right, but he’s willing to keep trying. That’s what fools do. And he doesn’t mind that one bit. He likes being a fool sometimes; there was a description he liked, he thinks it was Cervantes talking about good old Don Quixote, “an intermittent fool, full of lucid intervals”.
So he shall continue, and he shall stay here, like the fool that he is, writing foolish prose in his foolish notebook and slowly accepting the foolishly insular immediate future he has in store. Fools are as fools do, his mother always said. She was no fool.
Posted by patrick at February 20, 2004 06:24 PM
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